“I want a status report now!” demanded Dade wiping his sword clean with a dark cloth. “Somebody tell me exactly what’s going on!”

  “The fighting has been reduced to just the armory and hallway between it and the kitchen,” said Sean. “The phren had a casting circle in the armory. It was there that they were maintaining the darkness. Once we began attacking there, they switched to other spells, which is why we can all see again.”

  “What about Rori, Ian and Honoria?”

  “We have not found them yet.”

  “Find them! They have to be here somewhere.”

  “What if the phren . . .” started Sean.

  “Unacceptable!” Dade hollered as he slid the great sword into the scabbard strapped to his back.

  “It seems unlikely the phren took Rori,” said Nolan as he entered the room. He was holding a rag to the side of his face to staunch the bleeding from several long scratches that ran down his forehead and cheek. “If they had, the phren would have left. They keep fighting because they need him dead, and they don’t know where he is. And they have no reason to take Ian and Honoria.”

  “Then we need to find them,” Dade said.

  Kedra teleported into the center of the room with Jeremy and another cleric.

  “What’s happened now?” she asked.

  “We’ve got them bottled up. We’ve got people fighting them from both sides. It’s only a matter of time until it’s over,” said Nolan.

  “Come let me look at your face,” said Jeremy moving over to Nolan.

  “Has anyone . . .” started Kedra.

  “Not yet,” answered Dade.

  “I need a cleric,” shouted Wergen as he came into the room with Ian leaning on him. The archer’s clothes were tattered to shreds, and he bled from a dozen serious wounds and twice as many minor ones. His face was a grimace of pain.

  “Over here on this table,” the other cleric commanded.

  “No, not me,” coughed Ian. “Honoria first.”

  “Where is she?” asked Dade.

  “Behind us,” said Wergen. Before he’d finished talking two more soldiers came into the room carrying the elf on a makeshift litter made of bedsheets. Though they had started white, the sheets were now mostly blood red. As bad as Ian looked, Honoria looked worse. She made no sound other than a groan as the soldiers set her onto the table.

  “Forget me,” said Nolan slapping Jeremy’s hands away from his face. “Go to her.”

  “I believe I can help everyone at once if you’d quit interrupting, and Rosemary is more than capable as well,” said Jeremy as he began casting a spell holding his holy symbol of Meredith up above his head.

  Ian collapsed into a chair, but his eyes never left Honoria.

  “What happened?” asked Dade.

  “We were asleep and suddenly they were everywhere,” coughed Ian.

  Jeremy finished his spell and around the room various wounds began to close and heal. Nolan’s face was healed completely. Ian was still bad off, and needed more attention, but he no longer looked as if he was about to immediately collapse.

  Rosemary finished her own spell and instantly Honoria’s wounds disappeared. She was still a bloody mess, but there was no longer a scratch on her. The elf’s eyes opened. She sat up with a panicked look on her face but as soon as she saw Ian sitting in the chair, she calmed and slumped back down in exhaustion.

  “I told you we would live,” said Ian with a bloody smile.

  “In this you were right,” said Honoria. “I am glad. I would have missed you had we parted.”

  “Your turn,” said Jeremy moving over to Ian.

  “I’m heading back,” said Wergen moving to the doorway. “Hopefully there are still more rat heads to bash in.”

  “You said they were suddenly everywhere. Did they teleport in?” asked Kedra. “That should not have been possible.”

  “No, I don’t think so. They seemed to be coming out of the basement,” answered Ian as Jeremy cast another spell and healed the last of his wounds.

  Dade strode over to the door and stepped out into the hall. Speaking to soldiers the others couldn’t see he said, “You two. Get six men and go down to the baths and the storage rooms. Kill any phren you find. Also, see if you can determine how they got in.”

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  Stepping back into the room Dade looked to Ian and asked, “Where’s Rori?”

  “We got separated when the darkness hit. We were all trying to get to the armory. Honoria and I were forced to hide in a side room. We held the door for as long as we could and then we fought rats in the darkness. I have no idea how many of them there were or how many we killed or wounded. In the dark it seemed that there were countless numbers of them. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”

  “I agree. I was sure life was over,” said Honoria.

  “Bah,” said Wergen walking back into the room with Baxter behind him. “The fighting is over. The rats are all dead.”

  “Any sign of Rori?” asked Dade.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” answered Baxter.

  “Jeremy and Rosemary please go about your duties,” said Dade. “There are surely more wounded out there. Wergen take Baxter to the basement and help them secure the area and figure out how the phren got in. Kedra, or whoever else can do it, cast something that either puts us in touch with Rori or finds him. Preferably the latter. If the phren didn’t take him, then where is he?”

  The water lapped gently against the side of the boat. The little splits and spluts it made still seemed to go perfectly with the sounds of the woods.

  Rori’s foot hung over the edge of the small rowboat and trailed through the cool water. The sun once again fell warm onto his face. He breathed in the fresh air, sighed and then stopped.

  “Wait,” he said. “Something happened.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now,” said Meredith again sitting in the prow of the small boat.

  “Didn’t I leave? Am I leaving again?” asked Rori trying to remember exactly what had happened.

  “Not unless you want to,” said Meredith. “You can drift here for as long as you’d like. I think the calm is quite soothing. Don’t you?”

  Rori shifted in the boat trying to make himself comfortable.

  “I left, didn’t I?” he asked. “I was back in the mountain.”

  “Yes, but the less you think of that the better. For now, we are here. For now, it is enough that we drift.”

  Rori lay back his head and let his foot continue to pull through the cool water as the boat drifted along.

  He shifted again. There was something nagging at his mind and there was something poking him in the back as well. Only there wasn’t. He felt under himself and found nothing but boat.

  “Did we get attacked?” he said after another few moments had passed.

  “Do you trust me Rori?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then don’t think about it.”

  “I’m trying not to,” said Rori looking into her face for the comfort he usually found there. “But there is something in my back. And I keep feeling like I’ve forgotten something . . . something big.”

  “It’s the handle of a sword,” said Meredith with resignation.

  “Where?” said Rori twisting to look under himself.

  “Not here,” said Meredith. “At the mountain. It’s a stone sword that’s part of a statue, but I suspect it feels pretty much the same as a real one.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Rori as he began to notice some aches on other places on his body.

  “No, and if you did, you wouldn’t want to. One last time, please let it go. Lay back. Relax.”

  “But you said there was a sword.”

  “They got in through the baths,” said Wergen coming back into the room with Baxter. The dwarf was wet from his boots to the top of his head. The water dribbling off his clothes and beard making a large puddle around him.

  “Explain,” said Dade tossing a blanket to him from off of a nearby couch. Wergen began using it as a towel as he explained.

  “The water feeds into the hot bath from an underground spring. It comes through a grate in the far wall. Or rather it used to. Somebody has removed it. It’s a tight squeeze, but I managed to fit through the space. Phren would have no trouble at all.”

  “How did they find this place?” asked Sean. “I thought the magics would make Rori and the others unfindable?”

  “I have the answer to that as well,” said Wergen. “I’m going to guess that they already knew about this place. They just needed someone to tell them when we showed up. On the other side of the grate, the water moves through a sort of tunnel. It goes up a bit and there is a pocket of air and a branching side tunnel that leads to an open area. There are lots of phren tracks but there are also plenty of regular rat tracks. I suspect the little bastards have been reporting back to the big ones. We saw rat tracks in the dust when we got here. I should have paid more attention to them. We saw rat tracks but no rats. They had to have some way to get in and out.”

  “I didn’t know that the phren could talk to regular rats,” said Sean.

  “Normally no. But there are some special casters who can do it.”

  Kedra and Ian walked back into the room. Honoria, who was still sitting on one of the couches, started to stand, but then conscious of the others in the room sat back down. Ian, less concerned with appearances, moved across the room and sat beside her.

  “I’ve cast the spells I could, but if he is still wearing his ring, he cannot be found with a spell. I also cast the sending spell, but he does not reply to the message. The spell does not fail, so I do not believe he is dead, but neither does he respond.”

  “Is the entire complex secure?” asked Dade.

  “There are no phren left if that is what you mean,” said Ian.

  “Tell the other squads to gather up and get ready to leave. We cannot stay here any longer. The whole place is compromised. The core group will stay here and look again for Rori. Except I want you to quit looking for Rori and start looking for signs of Rori. Ian said they last saw him near the kitchen. Start there. Find something.”

  The longer Rori lay the more uncomfortable he got. The unfocused and nebulous pains he had started feeling were now crystal clear and definable and they were located pretty much all over his body.

  The pain in his back that Meredith said was a sword hilt, which was once his biggest nuisance, was now a minor annoyance. And the other pains were still getting worse.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Meredith.

  “I suppose it’s no use,” said Meredith. “Though I do believe you are past the worst of it.”

  “The worst is past me? It’s getting worse every moment.”

  “It only feels that way because I shielded you from it in the beginning. But you refuse to be separated from it. So now you must deal with it.”

  “The phren attacked!” said Rori the memory of the fight and flight in the hall coming back to him. “Ian and Honoria! Are they dead?”

  “Your friends are fine.”

  “We got separated. I hid in the bedroom. I went onto the balcony,” said Rori wincing at the increasing pain and at the memory.

  “Yes. You did,” said Meredith.

  “I climbed away!” said Rori, his memories filling in as fast as he could relate them. “I got onto the railing and climbed around to the other patio. I remember! I made it to the corner and out of sight just before the phren came out onto the patio. They were too late!”

  “You did get away from the phren,” Meredith agreed.

  “I was going to the other patio,” said Rori, the memory once again hitting a hazy mental roadblock. “I was going, but then I stopped.”

  “In a manner of speaking, that is true.”

  “I stopped . . .” said Rori as tremendous pain racked through his legs. “No, I didn’t stop . . . I fell.”